Men, Masculinity, and Male Domination: Reframing Feminist Analyses of Sex Work

Prostitution has been considered by feminists as, alternatively, a gendered relation, an issue of sexuality, and a kind of labor. In this article, I argue for an integrated feminist analysis of sex work that focuses on the first and third of these, leaving the second in the background. I argue that this reconstructed feminist analysis must reject the moralism and determinism of the gendered critique, and radicalize the economic critique. It must also, I suggest, orient itself toward consideration of prostitution as a symptom or function of various masculinities. In all cases, feminism has considered sex work as a question or problem of women's agency and sexuality. Reversing this standard feminist approach offers important new directions for empirical research, and denaturalizes prostitution as an inevitable feature of human life. This denaturalization radicalizes the otherwise traditional policy debate over prostitution by allowing for a more revolutionary critique of the relations of domination that both govern and constitute sex work as a stigmatized, hierarchical, and exploitative practice.